Tight races highlight turnout, Harvey loss

Published
6:00 am CST, Friday, November 9, 2018

For Democrat Nick Lampson, the irony in his close defeat for Jefferson County judge is inescapable. One of the main campaign points was that the county could have responded better to Tropical Storm Harvey and lost an unknown number of residents because of it, probably several thousand people. If some of those voters had remained, he might not have lost to incumbent Jeff Branick by just 949 votes out of 73,855 cast. That’s an average of only 8.7 votes for each of the county’s 109 precincts.

Then again, Republican incumbent Tim Funchess might be thinking the same thing. He lost to Democratic challenger Charlie Hallmark in the county treasurer’s race by just 666 votes, an average of 6.1 votes per precinct.

Granted, no one knows exactly how many voters left because of Harvey, or how they might have voted. Had they remained, both Branick and Hallmark might have won by even larger margins.

But these are things that losing candidates will be thinking about when they get 49-percent-plus of the vote and fall just short. Lampson also acknowledged the local appearance of Fox News anchor Sean Hannity and Sen. Ted Cruz, which undoubtedly drove up the GOP vote count. Branick was also the only county judge endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott, and that had to help him, too.

The close results in these and other races are another rebuke to those who stay home on Election Day and say, “My vote doesn’t count.” It absolutely does — as proved by these tight finals and others. You don’t know if a race is going to be a blowout or a cliff-hanger, so you should vote anyway. If enough waverers get out and vote, the final tallies could be different.

Lampson’s larger point about population loss from Harvey also holds up. As we have noted before, the population of Southeast Texas has been flat over the past two decades while the rest of the state is booming. That matters in a lot of ways, from the types of companies that will consider this area for new outlets to our political clout in Austin and Washington. When there aren’t enough people in Southeast Texas, we stand a greater chance of being tacked onto a state or federal electoral district just to fill it out.

That’s one reason — along with blatant gerrymandering — that the state senator and U.S. House member for Jefferson County don’t live here. They live in the Houston area, and like any politicians, their first loyalty will be to the majority of their voters, which in these cases means the 713 area code.

Let’s hope we fare better in the redistricting after the 2020 census. That effort will benefit cities and counties that at least gain some population instead of losing it.

If you’re a Harvey survivor who stayed, thanks for hanging in there. If you actually vote in local elections, you’re doing even more for yourself and your neighbors.